


The Nightmares from War

by TheMangledSans0508



Series: fuck you hugo's alive [4]
Category: Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts (Cartoon)
Genre: F/F, Hurt/Comfort, I SWEAR THE DEATH IS JUST A NIGHTMARE, Nightmares, idk how else to tag it, there's signs of ptsd here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-19 10:49:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29749395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMangledSans0508/pseuds/TheMangledSans0508
Summary: Over and over and over. She'd be back there. Back on the field. Her mind under a haze and her actions impaired. Was she living it for the first time?Then she'd wake up.
Relationships: Kipo Oak/Wolf, Mandu & Kipo Oak, Scarlemagne | Hugo & Wolf
Series: fuck you hugo's alive [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1986946
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	The Nightmares from War

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bard_of_Rage](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bard_of_Rage/gifts).



> Requested by @Bard_of_Rage.

She was on the battlefield.

She ran on autopilot, dodging humans and mutes alike. She had been here before. It was a panic she hadn’t felt in weeks or hadn’t felt since she was thrown on the surface in the first place. Maybe it was all a dream and none of it had been real.

She didn’t know.

It would explain her deja vu.

She could see Wolf, Hugo, and Emelia in front of her. They should have only been maybe fifty meters away, but she felt like she wasn’t getting any closer. It was darker, darker than it should have been. The wind was whipping, sending goosebumps up her arms and blowing something across the field.

This wasn’t what she remembered. 

Remembered? 

Imagined.

She still was making no progress. She couldn’t reach them in time.

Hugo was stabbed and Wolf was thrown backwards, slamming into a towering rock they had been fighting beside. Wolf swung at her and was jerked forward. Words were being said that she couldn’t hear from her distance. Emilia was kicked and shoved back, tripping over something that she couldn’t see.

She couldn’t reach them. 

She knew what was going to happen, whether it was foresight, memory, or worst-case-scenario, she knew it was coming.

The staff of the deathstalker tail hit Emelia across her face, and then Wolf leaned in. It was too fast, she couldn’t see the small movements. Wolf struck Emelia again, with her fist this time.

How did she know that? She couldn’t see that close.

Emelia moved quickly, lodging something in Wolf’s gut and shoving her backwards. She slammed into the rock and sunk down, and Kipo could move forward again. 

She wanted her fur to come out, but her legs remained human. She wasn’t going fast enough. She should have been there in milliseconds. Instead, it felt like it was taking hours.

She made it eventually, dropping to Wolf’s side. It was just them and Emelia, Hugo was gone. Everyone was gone. Just the two of them and her cold stare. God, the wound was worse than she remembered.

Remembered?

Imagined.

Wolf wasn’t looking at her, she was looking at her hand with some sort of sad amusement on her face. Her palm was covered in her own blood that slowly dripped off when she spread her fingers. She chuckled weakly. Kipo tried to keep her eyes on Wolf’s face and not on the gruesome puncture. Wolf turned to her and placed both her hands gently on her cheeks, still chuckling.

“I love you, you know that?” she whispered “I love you.” Kipo put her hands over hers.

She stopped breathing.

This wasn’t what had happened.

Had happened?

Was happening.

This couldn’t be happening. 

She stood up slowly and locked eyes with Emelia. She wanted to turn. Why couldn’t she turn?

She was smiling at her. Mocking her. Kipo lunged and they tumbled.

She was shouting at her, she didn’t even know what she was saying but she was shouting. Her face was wet and warm, from blood or tears?

Probably both.

That smile, that damn smile. It never faltered, never changed. Just that smile and cold blue eyes. She said nothing, just smiled.

She couldn’t turn, and she wanted to. She wanted to go mega and tear her to  _ shreds _ . Grab her in her maw and throw her so far that even with her super senses she’d never be able to find her again. 

She had to be content with holding her hands against her throat and hoping that she wouldn’t be thrown off, that she wouldn’t be overpowered because as a human, Emelia was stronger.

But she just sat there and smiled. The knife was still in her hands.

Kipo ripped it from her grasp and held it high above her head.

~

She woke up with a start, a hand flying to her mouth to hold in a scream. She was crying with her eyes squeezed shut. She found that her paws were out, along with her fangs. She was also aware of quiet oinking and a damp nose nudging her elbow that quickly moved to try and burrow into her chest.

She opened one eye hesitantly and was met with a dark room. She could still see as the room was lit by the moonlight pouring in the window. She and Mandu were alone which was unusual. She made sure to glace at the bed on the other side of the room. Wolf typically didn’t use it, unless they had an argument, or she got up to do something in the middle of the night and didn’t want to risk waking Kipo, or Hugo had done anything to annoy, or inconvenience, or anger Wolf. She would stay up for hours and just hit her staff against the wall until she got bored, or he shouted at her, or one of her parents intervened because they were both too stubborn to knock it off. Sometimes she’d do it just to get on Hugo’s nerves. Thinking about it almost made her laugh before she remembered what she had just experienced.

“Oh, Mandu,” she murmured, “I just had a horrible nightmare.” Her response was a snort, like an “obviously.” Kipo paused for a moment. “... was it a nightmare?”

It had felt so real, it was still so fresh in her memory that she could put herself back in a single moment. But there was inconsistency, people disappearing. Her inability to turn mute. A lack of words spoken by anyone other than Wolf and herself. It was as if her nightmare had taken her own memories and modified them, which would make sense.

For a brief moment, a horrible thought crossed her mind. What if it was a modified memory, but only modified to put emphasis on the emotions she had felt? What if the basic foundation of the dream was real, that the other memory she had was fake and Wolf really was…

Mandu headbutted her, squealing and putting her hooves on Kipo’s cheeks. She found it in her heart to giggle and place her hands behind Mandu’s ears to scratch her.

“Sorry, girl. I’m just thinking,” she sighed, “you already know that though, don’t you?” Mandu squeaked. “Is Wolf, you know…” alive? Okay? Here? She didn’t need to finish her sentence before Mandu was nodding. She stroked her back lightly. “Of course. You always know what I’m thinking. I just wish I knew the same for you. Like what you mean by yes.”

Mandu pointed towards the door, which didn’t help her understand any more. She noticed that Stalkette was missing from the side of the bed. She opened her mouth to make a comment when she heard the door open.

Her ears came out immediately and picked up on voices downstairs. She couldn’t hear well enough to tell who was speaking but could tell from their tone that they were in an argument. Footsteps on the stairs. Then the door opened.

“Well maybe if you weren’t so combative we would have gotten somewhere,” Hugo snarled.

“Maybe if you weren’t acting all evil we would have gotten somewhere,” Wolf retorted.

“You were waving your over-glorified stick all over the place, I don’t think I looked evil.” Wolf held a hand out of Kipo’s view and she heard an overexaggerated gasp come from Hugo. “Who taught you that? Do you even know what it means?”

“Dahlia. She said it’s an insult.”

“Well, she was partially correct.”

“Save me the lesson.”

“I’ll tell you tomorrow, at least the history. I will not be the one who tells you what it means,” Hugo stated. Wolf rolled her eyes.

“Whatever apeman. I’m going to bed,” she growled.

“As am I. I need my beauty sleep.”

“I don’t think it does much for you!” She hastily shut the door as she assumed Hugo swung at her. Then she turned around and noticed Kipo when Mandu started oinking as if she were a dog.

“Oh. You’re awake.”

“Yeah. What were you guys doing?” She shrugged. 

“Fighting.”

“That’s a lie.”

“I never said who.” Kipo leaned against the backboard of the bed, scooting over to give Wolf room to sit down if she wanted to. She did, leaning Stalkette against the wall beforehand.

“Were you guys at the Timbercat jail?” she questioned.

“No. Just some doing recon.” She idly grabbed Kipo’s hand. “Why are you up?”

“Just a nightmare,” Kipo muttered. 

“A bad one?”

“Yeah.”

“The same one?”

“Yeah.” She let her head fall against the backboard with a small “thud” and she took a deep breath. “I know that it’s not real but it feels real. Every time. I wake up and I think-” she saw the dream flash in front of her eyes again and she squeezed Wolf’s hand a bit harshly. “I just keep seeing it over and over. If my dad and the boys hadn’t been right there, if Emelia had gone even a little deeper, you’d be-”

“Kipo, stop,” Wolf ordered. She shifted to sit with her back to the door, looking at her expectantly. Kipo mimed her, leaning her back against the wall. She pressed their palms together. “Focus on me.”

“Focus on you.”

“Focus on me.” Wolf moved their hands around in the air. “Are you awake right now?”

“I think so,” she murmured. Wolf nodded.

“You’re awake. It was a nightmare. I’m alive, see?” She brought their hands to her chest, over her heart. “I’m a living wolf.”

“I know. It’s stupid they shake me up so much, but it’s-” she took a shaky breath. “You’re really important to me. I mean, obviously, we’re together. So it messes me up a lot to think about it.”

“I get it,” Wolf reassured. “I have those nightmares too.”

“Really?” She looked awkwardly to the side and nodded. 

“A lot. Ever since we all started travelling together.” She locked their fingers together. “So many different kinds. Like if you hadn’t tricked Jamack and he had taken you, or the Timbercats had traded us all, or Song hadn’t snapped out of her trance and crushed you. And the wolves.” She paused in an internal debate, making a decision Kipo didn’t know. “And other stuff too, ones kind of like yours. How differently that ambush could have gone.”

Kipo remembered something. Dark moonless nights where she’d wake up to see Wolf crying, her chest heaving up and down rapidly. Her knuckles pale from gripping the staff of her deathstalker tail. Her half-asleep mind only adjusted where she had been and moved to lay on her lower body, mumbling incoherently and passing back out.

“You could have woken me up,” Kipo said. Wolf shook her head. 

“I can deal with it myself. You need sleep.”

“You’re a hypocrite.”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“It means you say not to do something, then you do it. Or the other way around,” Kipo explained. “An example is you saying that you won’t wake me up when you have a nightmare, then telling me to wake you up if I have one.”

“I never said that.”

“You were about to.”

“I was about to,” Wolf collaborated. “I don’t like you feeling bad.”

“I don’t like you feeling bad either,” Kipo returned. She dragged Wolf forward into a hug, which was returned after a few seconds.

They were still working on physical contact, and manners, and not being blunt.

“Do you think you’re ready to go back to sleep?” Wolf questioned quietly. Kipo nodded.

“Yeah, I call little spoon.”

“Why are they called spoons?”

“I-” she thought for a moment “I don’t know. I’ll ask dad tomorrow. Or mom. Whoever gets up first.”

“Could always ask monkey-man,” Kipo added that to the mental list of things Wolf called Hugo instead of his actual name. “He likes to show off how smart he is.”

“But I don’t want to make him uncomfortable,” Kipo argued. “How about Troy, maybe he knows.”

“Whoever we run into first,” Wolf decided.

“Until then, I’m the little spoon,” Kipo declared. She saw the question bubbling up in Wolf’s mind again before it was dismissed. She just laid with her back to the door. Kipo tucked herself against her and tried not to cringe away when Wolf draped part of her pelt over her.

It meant a lot, Wolf would kill a man for so much as breathing on her pelt (Kipo thinks she has before). Her putting it over Kipo could mean a lot of things, the one she assumed was foremost was protection since it had always protected her. She didn’t like the smooth leathery interior of the pelt but she wouldn’t push it away. Wolf’s arms wrapped around her and Kipo thought they must have looked comical to the outside eye. At least a foot height difference, a wolf pelt, a pink girl, and a pig who had managed to squirm herself in between their waists.

It was a situation she didn’t mind at all. At least, not until the morning where Kipo was awoken by thunderous yelling through the house as Hugo chased after Wolf for committing some heinous crime against him that was most likely a simple insult.

**Author's Note:**

> So takes place a few months after SSTP, after the houses are mostly complete. I had a fun time writing this after I got over my writer's block in the beginning. Also a few notes because I think I'm funny.  
> \- Hugo and Wolf just exist to spite each other  
> \- Dahlia is a bad influence  
> \- Hugo and Wolf are like "we friends but I'd kill you for a slushie" and are shady together  
> \- Mandu has the personality of a pug and is permanently small


End file.
